


First You Wreck Me, Then Resurrect Me

by acertainlady



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex Danvers Is Really Good At Stitches Okay?, Doctor Alex Danvers, Don't Question Her, F/F, Hurt Alex Danvers, Mediator Maggie Sawyer, Multi, Protective Kara Danvers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25986823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainlady/pseuds/acertainlady
Summary: "Despite what you may believe, Director Lane, I did not defy orders today. My orders were to subdue the hostiles, neutralize their weapons, and avoid loss of life—agent, alien, or civilian. My team and I accomplished all three of those tasks.”...“Then let me make it clear for you, Agent Danvers. The next time you perform a medical procedure on yourself in the field without my explicit approval—the next time you so much as put a Band-Aid on yourself without my approval, you will be suspended from duty, without pay, for three weeks.”“Then let me make this real clear...Since you’re my superior, I’ll be sleeping at Kara’s tonight. God forbid we let the personal mix with the professional.”ORThe one where Alex gives herself stitches in the field while Lucy watches on CCTV, so Lucy crosses lines.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Lucy Lane/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 10
Kudos: 177





	First You Wreck Me, Then Resurrect Me

**Author's Note:**

> Please humor me and suspend your disbelief a bit for this one, but honestly, I just had a fleeting thought about how Alex probably keeps a suture kit in her tac belt, and then I ended up with an almost 7k-word story. I should probably seek help.

“Agent. Danvers.”

Alex bites back a monstrous sigh—it’s never good, hearing Lucy’s scathing voice call at her across the control room, and it’s _especially_ never good when her scathing voice is calling her “ _Agent_ Danvers.” Several agents briefly flit their eyes between the women before wisely fixing their stares on anything other than the two women, and Alex takes this opportunity to about face toward her commanding officer/girlfriend.

“Yes, ma’am?” A professional, respectful tone seems prudent, at least until Lucy inevitably beckons them into a more private area.

“My office. Now.”

Lucy stomps off, and Alex falls in step behind her, silently. Even once they are in Lucy’s office, Alex stays silent, waiting for Lucy to talk first. She knows she’s in trouble, and she’s ninety percent sure she knows why, but on the off chance she’s wrong, she doesn’t wanna be in trouble for two things. Besides, history has proven that allowing Lucy to rant at her for a while first, before she tries defending herself, helps Alex’s overall cause better than if she comes in swinging.

Also, Alex is really hoping to avoid being in trouble for the reason she suspects she’s in trouble. They have argued over it before, multiple times, and consistently reached an impasse. So she really, really hopes she isn’t in trouble for the reason she thinks she’s in trouble.

“Agent Danvers, would you mind showing me your left hip?”

Yeah, she’s definitely in trouble for the reason she thinks she’s in trouble, and she’s definitely screwed.

Knowing denial would only prolong and exacerbate the situation, Alex pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and rolls up the hem of her shirt, revealing the bandage she taped over her injury about an hour ago, after having returned to the DEO and properly cleaning and dressing it.

“Hmm,” Lucy hums, her jaw set tightly, her eyes hard and cold as she stares at the gauze, not Alex. She stands rigid, just a little in front of her desk, with Alex a few feet in front of her, standing just past the closed door. “Stitches?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How many?”

Alex grimaces. “Seven. But for the sake of expediency, and given the nature of the wound, I opted for a continuous suture. So, technically speaking, it’s only one, very long, stitch.”

Her attempt to lighten the mood proves fruitless as Lucy merely glares at her, leaning back against the edge of her desk, crossing her arms over her chest. Alex releases her shirt, covering back up, but continues to approach the situation, and Lucy, with caution.

“Agent Danvers, I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and before you answer them, I hope you will _think_.” Lucy spits the word out like poison. “Really, really _think_ , the way you failed to do in the field today.”

Alex recoils, averting her eyes from Lucy’s. It pains her to look into them, to see how angry she is.

“Why did you need seven stitches?”

“In an effort to protect Agent Paulsen from an explosion, I was hit by some shrapnel.”

“And I applaud your bravery,” Lucy states, her tone contradicting her words. “For that action, at least. However, upon realizing you were injured, what did you do?”

Alex hesitates, shifting her weight slightly from side to side.

“Need I remind you, I had Vasquez hack into the building’s CCTV. Not only did I see everything that transpired, real time, from the command center, but I can easily access the footage now, if necessary. So, again, Agent Danvers, upon realizing you were injured, _what did you do_?”

Gritting her teeth, infuriated by the tone Lucy is taking, Alex glares at her girlfriend—this is her _girlfriend_. Yes, technically she’s also her C.O., but for christsake, not even J’onn would react like this to what was clearly a tactically-intelligent battlefield decision. “I assessed my wound and determined it needed stitches. I am, of course, a medical doctor.”

“So as a medical doctor,” Lucy condescends. “Did you make the decision to seek shelter until help arrived, or at least until the hostiles were contained?”

“No,” Alex grunts.

“What did you do instead?”

“I sought temporary shelter away from combat so I could treat my wounds.”

“So you could sew your own skin together,” Lucy rephrases, not as a question, but rather as a statement, as something she knows and hates.

“Yes.”

“So you could sew your own skin together, _in the field_.”

“Yes.”

“In a dirty, grimy basement full of hostile aliens and undetonated bombs.”

“I did what I had to do,” Alex asserts.

“To keep yourself safe? To avoid getting an infection? To avoid further injury?”

“To get back into the battle.”

Lucy shakes her head bitterly, scoffing a bit. “Because the other dozen agents, they just couldn’t have managed without you?”

“I was leading them. I was running the op from the ground, I had to protect my men. I had to protect Kara.”

“You had me on comms. You know the protocol if you get injured running an op.”

“I wasn’t injured! I could still fight!”

“You couldn’t move the left side of your body without gushing blood!”

“Which is why I had to stitch myself up!”

Lucy slams her palm onto her desk, pointing at Alex with her other hand. “No! You did not _have_ to do that, Danvers!”

“I’m a doctor! I figured out how to stop the bleeding and I prevented more bleeding. What did you expect me to do? Lie low, like an idiot, watch my agents—watch my _sister_ —get attacked and blown up, instead of stepping up and doing my best to fight? Is that what you want me to do?”

“I want you to follow protocol!” Lucy barks. “I want you to follow orders! Those agents, Supergirl, they had the situation handled! You didn’t need to put yourself at risk.”

“My _job_ is to put myself at risk!” Alex scoffs back. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

“Because we have _talked_ about this, Alex.”

Her jaw dropping, the redhead takes a step back, almost pressing herself against the wall trying to distance herself from Lucy in the small office. She pauses, briefly, staring at her girlfriend in disbelief, and when she finally responds, her voice is low, grave, steady. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought the conversations we have in our bed, with Maggie, are personal. I thought they came from concern, from care. From _love._ I didn’t realize they counted as orders from my C.O.”

Lucy flinches imperceptibly at Alex’s somber, menacing tone, but chooses not to take the bait.

“I am a doctor, and I am also a soldier,” Alex declares proudly. “And when I am in the field, when there are lives on the line, I will do whatever it takes to protect and serve, and I will not apologize for that. I will never apologize for doing everything in my power to save more lives, even if you disagree with decisions I make. Despite what you may believe, _Director Lane_ , I did not defy orders today. My orders were to subdue the hostiles, neutralize their weapons, and avoid loss of life—agent, alien, or civilian. My team and I accomplished all three of those tasks.”

The major glares at Alex, and Alex glares back. Finally, after a long stand-off, Lucy speaks, taking a tone even icier than Alex’s, her nostrils flared, her demeanor undeniably final. “Then let me make it clear for you, Agent Danvers. The next time you perform a medical procedure on yourself in the field without my explicit approval—the next time you so much as put a Band-Aid on yourself without my approval, you will be suspended from duty, without pay, for three weeks.”

Alex’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“You need it spelled out for you? I’m spelling it out for you. I will not condone you running around, playing by your own rules—”

“ _I’m_ playing by _my_ own rules? How many other agents are you treating this way?”

“No other agents have demonstrated behavior as reckless, as _careless_ —”

“ _Careless_?”

“I will not stand for it. Not on my watch, not in my DEO.”

Alex releases a single, wry chuckle, placing her hands on her hips, shaking her head in disbelief. “This is absurd, Lucy. You’re really gonna pretend you’re doing this as my superior?”

“I am doing this as your superior,” the major insists, crossing her arms over her chest.

The agent continues to shake her head, her furious eyes fixing on Lucy’s combat boots for a moment before she manages to look up into green eyes, her own, dark eyes filled with anger and obstinacy. “Then let me make _this_ real clear,” she breathes. “Since you’re my _superior_ , I’ll be sleeping at Kara’s tonight. God forbid we let the personal mix with the professional.”

As she turns to leave Lucy’s office, she briefly looks over her shoulder at the other woman, adding, “And I’ll let you explain to Maggie why I’m not coming home.”

\----

Choosing to ignore the daunting stack of paperwork on her desk—Lucy’s already pissed at her, what’s the point?—Alex is climbing on her bike and peeling away from the DEO minutes later, knowing Kara likely flew home just after hearing the resolution to her fight with Lucy. Because Alex is smarter than to think Kara would _not_ listen in on their conversation.

But when she knocks on her sister’s door and gets the pretend-sheepish greeting (“ _Alex? What’s wrong?_ ”) she plays along, retelling her argument with her girlfriend, if for no other reason than to let off necessary steam. Kara nods along the whole time, letting her unleash her emotions as they come.

Once the story and outpouring of anger finish, Kara picks up her cell phone. “So is this a pizza or a Chinese kind of night?”

“What goes better with bourbon?”

“I’ll order both, then.”

Their conversation pauses as Kara orders food and Alex pours herself a generous drink, not bothering to keep up pretenses as she carries the bottle from the kitchen back to the couch with her. Once Kara successfully orders their feast, the silence persists, until:

“Maggie’s gonna take her side,” Alex mutters defeatedly.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. She’s gonna see it as a safety thing, and it’ll be two against one. It’s always two against one when it’s a safety thing.”

“Can you blame them?” Kara asks softly, but Alex veers on her.

“Do you think I liked stitching myself up in a gross basement storeroom, without any local anesthetic, hearing bombs blow up on the other side of the wall? It was hell. But I had to do it, because otherwise I would have lost too much blood, I would have been too weak and vulnerable—I could’ve just kept fighting, you know. I could have pretended I wasn’t even injured, could have kept fighting and let myself get taken out, or let someone else get taken out trying to save me. But instead, I made a calculated decision to use the few minutes I had between detonations to get myself back in fighting shape. And it was the right call, Kara.”

The blonde sighs, staring at her sister with a conflicted expression. “We had it handled, Alex. You didn’t have to hurt yourself.”

“I wasn’t hurting myself, I was fixing myself. And you really think you’d still ‘have it handled’ if you looked over and saw me still trying to fight one-handed, trying to hold pressure and bleeding through my Kevlar?”

Kara crooks an eyebrow. “So now it’s my fault for worrying about you when you’re injured?”

“No, of course not,” Alex mutters, sipping her drink and settling deeper into the couch. “I just don’t understand why Lucy’s making such a big deal out of this. I’m a doctor. I’m good at stitches. I’m _really_ good at stitches.”

“Where did you even get a needle and thread in that gross basement?”

Alex gestures vaguely with her free hand. “I always keep at least one set of sterile needles, sutures, and forceps in my tac belt. You never know when it’ll come in handy.”

Kara rolls her eyes, leaning her head on Alex’s shoulder. “You’re such a nerd.”

“A nerd who’s _really_ good at stitches.”

“Hmph,” her sister pouts. “I don’t like when you’re hurt.”

“This is nothing, Kara. I’ve had much worse, I assure you.”

Kara hums. “Like last month, when that Dominator threw you into a brick wall and dislocated your shoulder?”

“Eh, I popped it right back in. I was fine.”

“What about the time a couple weeks before that when you got the really bad concussion but kept fighting till you passed out?”

“I took out two combatants in that time, thank you very much. Besides, I was only unconscious for like, three hours.”

“The time that acid-spitting alien almost burned your face off?”

“Okay, but he didn’t! And if he did, I had already created the counter-serum to treat it.”

“Are you really not seeing a pattern here?”

“Yes,” Alex admits. “The pattern is I get injured in the line of duty, I take care of it, and then my sister and my girlfriends overreact.”

Kara shakes her head. “You are stubborn, and impossible.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Hey, if you needed open heart surgery, would you perform that on yourself, too?”

“Pfft,” Alex replies, throwing her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “Of course not. I haven’t had adequate training as a cardiothoracic surgeon, so it would be irresponsible. Besides, think about the angle—it’d be really hard to get a good visual inside my own chest cavity.”

“What about, like, a knee replacement?”

“I could probably manage my own knee replacement,” she declares, polishing off her drink. “But not in the field, though, because Lucy would suspend me.”

“She just cares about you.”

“She treats me different,” Alex complains, leaning forward to refill her glass. “She holds me to a different standard because of our personal relationship, and it holds us both back.”

“You treat me differently because of our personal relationship.”

“I do not!”

“Alex, I am bulletproof and you still freak out every time someone opens fire on me. Sometimes you even jump _in front_ of me instead of _behind_ me when we’re getting shot at.”

“That’s instinct!”

“You spend more time worrying about me than yourself, or any other agent.”

“You’re my sister!”

“You’re Lucy’s girlfriend.”

She grits her teeth, swirling bourbon in her glass. “Not at work. We agreed. We agreed…you and I, we never agreed. We always treat each other like sisters, even when I’m calling you ‘Supergirl’ and we can’t acknowledge our true relationship. But Lucy and I, when we—when she took over the desert base, we agreed to separate it as best we can. At home, she isn’t my C.O. At work, she isn’t my girlfriend.”

Kara snorts. “How’s that working out?”

“Well, I’m getting drunk and crashing here tonight, so you tell me.”

Curling into her big sister’s side, she assures her, “You’re gonna work it out. You always do.”

“Yeah,” Alex chokes.

“Wanna watch that _X-Files_ episode where Jodie Foster plays the evil tattoo?”

“Yeah. I really do.”

Kara wraps her sad sister in a big hug and a blanket before starting the show.

“I bet Dana Scully would be proud of me,” Alex mutters under her breath.

\----

Lucy tried to keep working after Alex stormed out, but it was useless. Typing up her reports required her to review footage of her girlfriend stitching herself up in a musty, cobweb-covered storage room while still trying to direct her agents over comms, and every time Lucy tried to watch it…the scene has already been replaying in her brain since she first saw it.

So she’s given up on paperwork and gone home, but now, as she stands in front of her apartment door, she realizes she’s about to forced to explain everything to Maggie. She is not ready for that. She contemplates leaving—going back to the DEO, going to a bar, going literally anywhere other than through this door. But she can’t do that. She can’t worry Maggie like that, she can’t lie to her and say she and Alex are fine when they clearly are not. That’s not fair, or right, and it would only make things worse. Make it so both her girlfriends are mad at her.

Thus, Lucy toughs it out. She opens the door and walks through, finds Maggie sitting at the kitchen counter.

“Luce!” Maggie sighs, standing, sounding half-relieved, half-annoyed. “What the hell? Where have you been, what’s going on? Where’s Danvers?”

“She’s sleeping at Kara’s tonight,” Lucy chokes out, slinking over to the couch without removing her jacket or shoes.

“Oh,” Maggie says. “Is Kara okay? Did she blow her powers, or—?”

“Kara’s fine,” she explains, resting her face in her hands, her elbows on her knees. “But Alex is pissed at me, and to be honest, I’m not exactly pleased with her, either.”

Running her fingers through her hair, Maggie crosses to sit on the coffee table in front of her girlfriend. “What happened?”

“We were tracking a technopathic alien with a penchant for making things explode. Danvers was leading the team from the ground, I was directing from base. Just like always. Supergirl was there, the situation was under control, but…Alex jumped in front of another agent to protect him from a blast and got hit. Nothing terrible, but she had a lac on her hip and was bleeding. Badly. And she—she didn’t even call it in. She didn’t even tell me, I had to watch as she snuck off to where she thought the cameras could see her, but I could still…”

Lucy trails off. Maggie nods knowingly, gravely, staring into Lucy’s vacant, faraway eyes.

“What happened?”

“She stitched herself up,” the major scoffs. “Bit down on her holster for the pain. That is, in between still asking for sitreps from where she was. And I saw the whole thing, and I couldn’t even—I couldn’t stop her, I couldn’t yell at her, ask her what the hell she was thinking, because then Kara would hear, and get distracted, and the whole op would have gone south. All I could do was stand there and watch our girlfriend sew two ends of her skin together before she went back out into the fray.”

Maggie scrubs her face with her hand. “Okay, I don’t understand. So she had an injury in the field, and she treated it. Did something go wrong?”

“Yes,” Lucy barks. “She unnecessarily put herself through pain and agony for no other reason than to keep herself in a fight that didn’t need her. She could have just sat back, held pressure, and waited for help.”

“If she did that, she wouldn’t be our Alex.”

“So you’re on her side?” Lucy breathes, standing up and creating distance from Maggie. “I should have guessed.”

“I’m not on any _side_ , Lucy, you haven’t even told me the whole story. Did something happen to her?”

“No, of course not. She sewed herself up so quickly and expertly that it probably set a world record, because she’s Alex freakin’ Danvers, but that’s not the point. The point is, it’s the fourth time in the three months since I took over the desert base that she has displayed a reckless disregard for her own life and safety while in the field, gotten injured because of it, and then failed to follow proper procedure and protocol in the aftermath.”

She pulls a bottle of scotch from her shitty-day stash and pours herself a glass. Maggie watches carefully.

“So once she got back to base, you wrote her up? Gave her a formal warning, went through the proper channels, reminded her of the protocol?”

Closing her eyes, Lucy shakes her head, trying to remain calm and composed as she relays her argument with Alex back to Maggie. She finishes the story just before she finishes her glass of scotch, and goes about topping herself off as Maggie processes the new information.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“You crossed a line, Lane.”

Lucy gapes at her girlfriend, slamming down her glass. “ _I_ crossed a line? Are you kidding?”

“Danvers had a point. The conversations we have, the three of us, are merely concerned girlfriends trying to encourage each other to stay safer at work. They are not, have never been, marching orders. If any other agent had done what she did—”

“No other agent _can_ do what she did.”

“Exactly. But if any other agent could, and did, stitch themselves up in the field in order to keep fighting, you’d commend them. You’d probably also poke fun a bit and give ’em hell, but you wouldn’t threaten them with suspension or accuse them of insubordination.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”

“I’m not taking her side,” Maggie asserts, standing up from the coffee table. “I’m taking the side of all three of us coming home from work in one piece and sharing a bed together. All of us. _Together_. And yeah, that involves you two not getting into huge arguments, but it also involves Danvers not being a self-destructive moron. However, at least in this case, the self-destructive moron thing is a home problem, not a work problem. You should have chewed her out for it at home, as her girlfriend, not as her C.O.” Reaching out across the kitchen counter for Lucy’s hand, she adds, “Also, you should have done it at home so I could have joined you, because chewing her out for being a self-destructive moron is more effective as a team sport.”

Smiling sadly, Lucy accepts Maggie’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

“She’s always gonna be this way, Luce. It’s what makes her a good soldier—an incredible soldier, at that. It’s why she went from med school burnout to J’onn’s right hand in two years. She’s as exceptional as she is infuriating, and terrifying, and… _stupidly_ stubborn. As annoying as it is, she has that deadly combo of killer instincts plus the ability to actually pull them off.”

Lucy sighs. “I know.”

“It’s not an affront to your leadership. J’onn can’t contain her, either.”

“That’s not the issue.”

Maggie scrutinizes her, squeezing her hand lightly. “So what is?”

She shrugs hopelessly. “I just thought…it would get easier. To sit in the desert, watching from afar as she…”

“Puts her life in danger?” Maggie supplies quietly.

“Yeah.”

The detective nods along with her, watching tears prick into beautiful green eyes. “Then let’s come up with a solution, okay? One that doesn’t involve Danvers changing who she is, or you getting scared out of your mind every day, or me being put in the middle of a fight between my two favorite girls—my two very special, very brilliant, very headstrong, but still absolute bar-none favorite girls. Deal?”

\----

It’s nearly midnight when Kara and Alex hear a knock on the door. Alex immediately reaches for her sidearm, but Kara rolls her eyes, pushing the gun down.

“It’s just Lucy.”

Alex exhales sharply. “I’m not ready to talk to her yet.”

“That’s fine,” Kara agrees. “But you did turn your phone off, and I’m sure she’s worried about you. So I’ll tell her she needs to give you space, but that you’re okay and I’m taking care of you. Is that okay?”

She nods, tucking a stray lock of red hair behind her ear. “I’m just…gonna go in the bedroom. If I see her…” A defeat sigh escapes her before she continues, “Just make sure she’s okay, too, all right? Please. And Maggie, also. I need to know they’re okay, that they don’t…hate me.”

“Yeah,” her ever-compassionate sister smiles at her. “I understand. I’ll come get you when she’s gone.”

Another soft, unsure knock rings out, and they stand, Alex retreating away from the sightlines of the door as Kara approaches it.

“Hey,” she greets the shorter, hardened woman on the other side. “I—she says she’s not ready. She’s safe, she’s fine. I have her stuffed with takeout, and,” she lowers her voice briefly but considerably “I made sure she only had a little bourbon, then I made her switch to beer.” Kara offers Lucy a kind, reassuring smile. “She’s okay. She just needs the night.”

Lucy bites her lip, bowing her head. “Right. Yeah. Sure. So…um. Thank you.”

“Of course,” she smiles, still. “Are you okay? She…well, she’s Alex. So she’s worried about you, and about Maggie.”

The brunette’s lips crack into a bittersweet smirk. “Of course she is. Tell her we’re okay. We miss her, and we’re worried about her, too. But we think we came up with a compromise. Maybe. To prevent these… _tensions_ from boiling over like this. When she’s ready, we’d like to talk to her about it.”

Her eyebrows knitting together, Kara studies Lucy. “What kind of compromise?”

“The kind that lets Alex keep being Alex, me keep being me, and all of us keep happily sleeping in the same bed.”

Kara continues to study her in silence for a moment, until Lucy feels compelled to elaborate.

“And by ‘all of us,’ I mean me, Alex, and Maggie.”

“Yeah, I figured that much out, thanks,” Kara grumbles. “I’m just…worried it sounds a little too good to be true.”

“And here I always thought you were the optimistic Danvers sister.”

“I want Alex to be happy,” Kara snaps, set off by the tone and already offended by the way her sister was dressed down by this woman earlier that day. “I don’t like when she’s hurt, or sad, and I have trusted you and Maggie to keep her from being hurt or sad, so I’m just making sure that’s not a decision I should revoke or regret.”

“Stand down, Kara.”

Alex’s voice rings out from across the loft, quiet but firm. The Kryptonian turns to see her sister standing, hunched and timid, in the living room, her wide, sad, dark eyes staring straight at the woman on the other side of the doorway.

“Are you still mad at me?” she asks, and Lucy raises a defiant eyebrow.

“As if you’re not still mad at me?”

The redhead scoffs, finally looking away for a second. “So what’s this great compromise you came up with?”

“Sawyer and I came up with it, actually, and it’s only fair we include her in this conversation. It affects her, too.”

“I’m not ready to go home yet,” Alex jumps.

“I understand,” Lucy relents. “She’s in the car. If you wanna talk, I text her to come up. If you’d rather wait, I go back downstairs and she drives me home.”

“Right,” Alex snorts. “So you’ve just teamed up against me, then?”

“No. I promise you, that’s not what this is. We haven’t decided anything, we want to talk this through with you. Nothing happens unless and until we all agree. Same rules as always.”

Kara’s eyes dart between her pigheaded sister and her pigheaded sister’s equally pigheaded girlfriend as they engage in a multifaceted staring contest. Finally, Alex breaks eye contact with Lucy to glance at her sister, a move which the DEO’s desert director doesn’t fail to pick up on.

“She can stay. Actually, I’d prefer if she stayed; she’s our family, and this is a family decision.”

That warms Kara’s heart, a bit, and if Alex weren’t still a little suspicious and a little angry, it would have warmed hers, too.

“Text her.”

Lucy nods, looking over to Kara, who looks to Alex, waiting for her to nod before stepping aside and allowing Lucy inside the apartment.

 _Come up,_ Lucy types to Maggie. _But beware the Kryptonian attack dog._

They stand awkwardly in the kitchen/dining area for a few moments, waiting for Maggie to arrive.

“Drinks,” Kara suggests. “These things are easier when you have something to hold, and drink. So…beer, wine, water? Which would you like?”

“Beer.”

The response is automatic from both human parties, and immediately followed by a sheepishly exchanged look.

“Maggie will want the same, I think,” Lucy offers, just as a tentative knock falls against the door.

“Come in!” Kara calls out.

When Maggie opens the door, her eyes instantly scan the room until settling on Alex. She makes a beeline toward the taller woman, wrapping her up in a tight but careful hug, which Alex gratefully returns.

“Are you okay?” she whispers into her chest.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Can I see?”

Alex sighs, but nods, allowing Maggie to peel away just enough that she can pull up the hem of her tee shirt and see the bandage stuck to her lower abdomen. The detective ever-so-lightly grazes her fingertips around the edges.

“You’re sure you’re okay? No internal damage, no nothing?”

“I checked,” Kara admits shyly, rounding the kitchen counter to distribute beer bottles. “Nothing serious.”

“What did I tell you about x-raying me without permission?”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep hiding and lying about your injuries.”

Alex scoffs, stalking away from them as she takes a swig of her beer. “Oh, so you’re all ganging up on me now, then? Is that what this is?”

“ _No_.”

The same word comes from the three most important people in Alex’s life, all at the same time, in unison, with the same adamant tone, and she starts to regret that she even allowed Kara to open the door for Lucy.

But then the blonde alien is standing next to her, reaching her hand out, an apologetic smile on her face, and Alex remembers that her sister can’t help but worry about her, that even if she were completely honest all the time about her human vulnerability to injury and pain, Kara would still be compelled to check on her, to take care of her—much in the same way that, even though her little sister is virtually invincible, Alex can’t help that her instinct is to use her fragile human body to shield Kara from bullets or fists or anything else.

“Sorry,” Alex mutters, staring only at the depths of her beer bottle and nothing else as she sinks down into the couch, Kara immediately taking up post next to her. “I’m just…”

She lets herself trail off, and Lucy takes a few moments to make sure she isn’t going to keep talking before she cuts in.

“It’s okay. I get it. I…I was out of line today, Alex. I did what we promised each other we wouldn’t let happen—I allowed my fears about seeing you get hurt, about losing you, interfere with my professional decision-making. And it wasn’t the first time, obviously, but…” She takes a deep breath. “Honestly, the stakes were low, today. This fear, this panic, has been stewing inside me ever since I took this job, and the only reason I let it boil over today was because I could afford to let it. Supergirl had the situation handled—thanks, by the way.”

“Anytime,” Kara nods.

“And you were injured, but it wasn’t serious—a few months from now, you probably won’t even have a scar.”

“I won’t,” Alex contends. “Because I’m really good at stitches.”

Maggie chuckles, crossing the room to sit in one of the chairs across from the couch, gesturing for Lucy to follow. After a moment of hesitance, she eventually does so, perching herself onto the chair next to Maggie’s.

“I know you are,” Lucy acknowledges, her heartfelt eyes attempting to stare straight into Alex’s soul. “Just like you’re really, really good at your job. But that…that’s not the point.”

Tightening her grip on Kara’s fingers, Alex clears her throat. “So what is the point?”

“The point is I’m not built to watch you in action,” the major confesses, her voice cracking. “I can’t…I didn’t realize how hard it would be. Watching you get beaten and blown up day in and day out from dozens of miles away, over grainy, hacked security cameras, waiting, just _waiting_ , thinking that every sound, every blip, every buzz of static, is—”

Her hands go to the sides of her head, pushing it down toward her knees, her body wracked with pain she can’t show. Familiar with their girlfriend’s expressions of turmoil, Alex and Maggie wait patiently for her to regain her self-discipline and continue explaining.

It takes less than forty-five seconds.

“If something happened to you, Alex, while you were on duty…it would be my fault. Anything that happens to you while you are in the field, under my direction—anything that happens to you is my fault.”

“Except it’s not.”

“Does that work for you?!” Lucy all but snaps at the agent. “If something happens to Kara, if something happens to me or to Maggie, even if you’re nowhere near us when it happens, even if there’s no way you could have stopped it, nothing you could have done—does it really, truly help you when someone tells you it’s not your fault? Does that fix it, does that magically erase your guilt, your pain, your self-hatred?”

“Lucy,” Maggie reprimands her.

“Sorry,” she offers perfunctorily.

“Maybe you should go,” Kara growls at them.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Lucy repeats, more sincerely this time. “But I just—I can’t do this anymore.”

“Oh God,” Alex gasps. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No!” Lucy and Maggie yell at once.

“God, no,” Lucy continues on her own, holding her hands out toward Alex in hopes of settling her nerves. “No. Never. I love you. I love you like crazy, Danvers, but I can’t…I can’t keep thinking I’m about to watch you die.”

Alex inhales shakily. “What?”

“Every time I send you into the field, every time I assign you to an op, I…I am _convinced_ I am sentencing you to certain death. I try to tell myself you’ll be okay, I try to tell myself I’m paranoid, but I can’t. I can’t talk myself out of it, I can’t calm myself down, I can’t even run a simple mission properly, because I’m too busy thinking of worst-case scenarios. It’s all I can think about, is that I’ll lose you, and it’ll be my fault. You’ll die, and it’ll be my fault.”

Alex sits frozen for a moment, then pulls her knees to her chest, curling up and collapsing against Kara’s side, melting into her younger sister’s touch and affection as soon as two strong Kryptonian arms wrap around the balled-up body.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex breathes, her voice layered with guilt and shame, her gaze unfocused and faraway. To think that she has been causing her girlfriend such suffering, without knowing, is a bit too much for her to process all at once.

“I thought it would go away,” Lucy shrugs. “Or at least get easier.”

Alex shakes her head, her eyes empty and excruciated. “You don’t deserve that. You should break up with me.”

“Hey,” Maggie interjects. “Stop that. Nobody is breaking up with anybody. Not here, not now, not ever. The only reason this conversation is happening at all is because we all love each other too damn much to stand losing each other. We are a fucking team, and nobody is gonna stand in our way, especially not ourselves, so how about we all let go of our self-hating bullshit for a minute and figure this out like people who love each other and wanna be together, okay? Please?”

Lucy mumbles an agreement under her breath while Alex nods, although Kara does pull her little sister a teeny bit closer to her, just in case, and Maggie can’t help but smile at the protectiveness, while also, in part, lamenting how blind Alex remains to the deep and unconditional love which surrounds her, from her sister, her girlfriends, even J’onn and the Superfriends—and that’s only the beginning.

The thing that pains Maggie most, though, is knowing that she can’t use sheer numbers to prove Alex’s doubts have no standing. Normally, Alex’s doubts are soundly thwarted by data. She finds comfort in the concrete, in the measurables—but when Alex doubts whether or not she is loved, whether or not she deserves love, trying to show her data about how loved she is only throws salt in the wound. It only convinces her more that she doesn’t deserve the love she’s shown.

So, Maggie approaches with caution.

“What if you stopped splitting your time between the desert base and the city base? What if you were stationed solely at the city base, reported only to J’onn, and only reported to Lucy when explicitly assigned and approved for one-off missions?” Maggie proposes, her face impassive, trying to remain the neutral party.

Alex’s eyebrows knit together. “And what? Forfeit half my field opportunities?”

“No,” Lucy sighs. “You’d have the same amount of field time. The field command center would operate through the city base, and the desert base would be designated solely for high-risk containment and interrogation, training, and remote cyber command and situational awareness support.”

Still half-curled-up against Kara’s side, Alex pinches the bridge of her nose. “You want to restructure the entire DEO because we can’t keep our personal feelings separate from the chain of command?”

Lucy shrugs. “It doesn’t make sense to run half our ops from the desert base, anyway. Given Supergirl’s prominence, fewer and fewer attacks are taking place in remote, low-profile locations. Instead, they’re increasingly focused within city limits, in high-traffic areas. Splitting our best agents between bases only cuts down on response times and puts more civilians at risk.”

“She has a point,” Kara concedes. “The desert base adds at least like, six seconds to my commute. I can’t imagine what it’s like when you can’t fly.”

Alex jumps off that point. “Would I still work with Kara? You’d reassign her, too, right?”

“We would never ask you to give up working with Kara,” Maggie stresses. “Well, I can’t speak for Lucy, obviously, but as far as I’m concerned, you’d both be dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for how you look out for each other—I’d never ask you to give that up.”

“Me neither,” Lucy seconds. “Not in a million years. I’d take a bullet before I’d ask you to stop working together.”

Alex tenses, and Kara sighs, squeezing her sister softly. “Thankfully, that’s not a choice anyone has to make right now.”

Lucy’s lips quirk into a compulsory, unreadable smile, then set into a hard, thin line before she gets back to business. “We’d have to talk to J’onn about it, obviously, but…I think he can already tell there are a few kinks in the current setup, and I can’t imagine he’ll be anything but willing to work them out. Especially if it’s what you want.”

Alex bites her lip. “So you don’t wanna work with me anymore?”

“No, babe,” Lucy sighs. “That’s not it at all. Of course I want to work with you. I want to be around you all the time. I want to see you kick ass and take names and solve problems but I…it’s not that simple. It’s not that simple. I wish it were, but…I can’t. I can’t. The things I love so much about you—your commitment, your loyalty, your determination—they terrify me now. They terrify me because when you’re in the field under my command, I’m in charge of your life. I…I couldn’t live with myself, Alex. If anything happened to you—hell, when the littlest thing happens to you, I beat myself up for days. I can barely live with myself when you _almost_ get hurt. If something serious happened…” She cuts herself off, her knuckles bone-white around the neck of her beer bottle as she stares into nothing, afraid of losing her stride. “You’re not just another soldier to me, Danvers. I understand the sacrifice. I’ve lost soldiers before. I’ve written, called, visited next of kin. I know what you sign up for. I know what I signed up for. But…fuck, Alex, how am I supposed to break the news to Maggie and Kara that I got you killed?”

Maggie and Kara visibly flinch at this, but Alex sighs defeatedly.

“It wouldn’t be your fault, Luce,” she assures her. “They’d both know as well as you that _you_ didn’t get me killed—I got myself killed by being who I am.”

Lucy snorts. “Wouldn’t make it easier on me.”

“I know.”

There’s an extended silence, a heavy pall.

“So, maybe we just accept that it’ll be easier on everyone if you don’t work together. It’ll suck, not seeing each other as much, but in terms of temperaments, it’ll make things run a lot more smoothly, I think,” Maggie finally utters.

Kara affectionately sweeps some hair out of Alex’s face. “I think it sounds like a good idea.”

Alex’s wide, sad eyes meet Lucy’s mournful, concerned ones. “So you won’t get mad at me when I stitch myself up in the field?”

“Oh, I will,” Lucy asserts. “But as your girlfriend, not your superior.”

Tears brim dark brown eyes. “And you still love me?”

The major smiles. “With all my heart, till the day I die.” She squeezes a tanned hand. “You and Maggie both.”

Alex smiles timidly. “Me too.”

Maggie exhales with relief, focusing on the redhead to ask, firmly, “So do you still wanna sleep here tonight?”

And Alex is shaking her head emphatically, and Kara is pretending she doesn’t see the lecherous glints in their eyes.


End file.
